Friday News: iPhone 5; Athletes Reading; Sexy Buses

News was kind of sparse yesterday so I present to you this awesome advertisement. Press [cc] in the bottom bar to get the English subtitles

LeBron, Reading And How Books Can Benefit A Pro Athlete – Dan Grunfield writes an essay for SBNation about the value of reading for athletes. (He’s Team Gale by the way. Go Dan). During the NBA Championships, LeBron James was “caught” reading The Hunger Games (I’m going to make a guess that LeBron is Team Peeta). I also think that reading consistently throughout the entire course of a season can have some positive longer-term impact on performance. The reason I think this is because of the nature of sports, where seasons are long, practices are grueling, and games are intense. At every level — but particularly at the professional level — the work is hard, the ups and downs are drastic, and the scrutiny is sharp. Every athlete needs some form of distraction during this kind of season; a way to take your mind off your sport so it doesn’t totally consume you. I know athletes who have written screenplays during a season, have become obsessed with politics, and have turned into hardcore gamers. Getting young kids to see their heroes read is a tremendous step in improving literacy, in my opinion. Wouldn’t it be awesome if it were actually uncool to NOT read?SBNation.com

iPhone 5 – The new iPhone was announced on Wednesday. The iPhone 5 is bigger (4″ screen) and slimmer. I do like that the new aspect ratio of the iPhone is 16:9 which matches the ratio of most HD movies. But it comes with a new connector making all your old connectors and chargers and docks obsolete unless you get adapters. Apparently in the Europe, there is a universal adapter law. All electronics need to have a micro USB adapter per a European Commission rule. Why is there not a rule like that in the US? The other thing that made me really unhappy about the new Apple offerings is that they have abandoned the square nano and replaced it with a tall, thin device. Apple

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Jane Litte is the founder of Dear Author, a lawyer, and a lover of pencil skirts. She self publishes NA and contemporaries (and publishes with Berkley and Montlake) and spends her downtime reading romances and writing about them. Her TBR pile is much larger than the one shown in the picture and not as pretty.
You can reach Jane by email at jane @ dearauthor dot com

Comments

I don’t know if you’ve heard this shocking news. YA agent and book blogger, Pam van Hylckama (http://twitter.com/BookaliciousPam) tweeted about being carjacked/attacked near her kid’s school (she wasn’t sure initially whether she or the car was the object of the attacker.) Her dog saved her and her daughter from worse, biting the attacker who then fled.

Police found a suspect with a history of abuse from her query box, went to the address he used for the query and found a man with a dog bite. The man is now in custody.

I’m so glad Pam is safe, but it really does emphathise that deranged authors aren’t just irritating, but sometimes genuinely dangerous.

Coincidentally someone sent a deaththreat to author Anne Allen after Pam criticised her for giving dumb advice about Amazon reviews. Pam did not, of course, advocate Ms Allen be killed or hurt!

@Ann Somerville: Oh, god. That’s so awful. I’m so glad they caught the tosser and that the agent and her daughter are all right. Seems that he tracked her whereabouts through Foursquare and possibly Twitter. Surprise, surprise. :(

@Jane: I’m with you on not liking the new nano. I wear mine on as a watch while I’m working out and it’s great (tunes, podcasts, music, stopwatch, timer, clock). The only complaint I had about it was that there was no wireless/bluetooth connection for earphones so I had to be careful of the cord. If I didn’t want to wear it as a watch, I could also clip it on to my clothes. Maybe Pebble will come up with something to replace it since they did so well in their kickstarter campaign.

From what Pam said last night, her attacker was a disgruntled querier (sp?). Her little Jack Russell leapt to her defense and bit the guy. You gotta love a terrier. Regardless of size, they are FIERCE! The dog will be receiving an accommodation from the cops, and I’m sure a lot of love and steak from Pam and her family. I’m so glad to hear she’d ok and that her daughter didn’t witness the attack, but it really freaks me out that something like this would happen.

The universal phone charger has been coming since 2009. It was agreed among manufacturers to reduce waste and lower the impact on the environment, but doing so is not compulsory. As far as I can tell, Apple is the only major player in cell phones who is not a party to the agreement. It’s kind of sad that while everyone else is streamlining and working to reduce waste, Apple is going in the opposite direction with the iPhone and its new charging configuration.

Sorry for the delay in replying but your message came through when I was already in bed just checking emails on the iPad before going to sleep. As Isobel said, he was someone who’d queried Pam unsuccessfully, and the police found his name by going through her hate mail (ie the normal garbage that agents can expect these days from unsuccessful authors, yuck.)

Next time that bully site makes fun of Lucy having received death threats via her phone (which means someone – two separate someones – went to the trouble of tracking her and her number down based on information published by that site), I hope someone chokes them with this newest outrage. Although with the cognitive dissonance practiced by its owner, she will probably say that Pam brought it on herself because she should have been ‘nicer’ to the author or something.

I just recently signed with Pam as my agent, and she mentioned that while her Jack Russell bit the attacker, her bulldog licked his hand. That must have been a terribly frightening experience for her, so personally I’m glad she managed to keep her sense of humor. Not sure I’d be able to do the same. She’s a brave lady.

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